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US Patent Office To Re-Examine Blackboard Patent
Mr_5tein writes "Groklaw is reporting that the US Patent and Trademark Office has just ordered a re-examination of the e-learning patent owned by Blackboard Inc, thanks to a filing by the Software Freedom Law Center. SFLC's press release states, 'The Patent Office found that prior art cited in SFLC's request raises "a substantial new question of patentability" regarding all 44 claims of Blackboard's patent...' The SFLC explains that though such re-examinations may take a couple of years to complete, approximately '70% of re-examinations are successful in having a patent narrowed or completely revoked.'"
I develop educational software myself, so I'm very pleased with this. Two points seem to be especially interesting:
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
No, just the internet-based equivalent ;)
Actually, none of your money is spent to fund the USPTO. The agency is completely funded by the fees it raises for examinations, re-examinations and the myriad of other fees associated with the patent system. Actually, a lot of the money the PTO makes winds up going back to fund other government agencies.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I asked the same question to a friend a while ago, his response was rather discouraging.
As he explained to me, patent clerks are paid on a commission basis on how many patents they grant, not on how many they review. That, in and of itself, is rather discouraging, but it is compounded by the way that patents are granted or denied. In order for a patent to be granted only one of the claims has to be novel and innovative. Once this has been established, the patent clerk and the applier go through a review process on the remainder of the claims to see which are novel and which aren't. However, as noted above, since the patent clerk is paid on a commission basis on how many patents they grant, spending additional time reviewing a patent that is granted, but is only on a matter of which claims to allow, isn't worth his time. He's granted the patent, he's got his commission, now he just wants it off his desk.
The result of this system is that when one applies for a patent they make one of their claims so blatantly novel that there is no possibility that it could be rejected. For example, I could write a patent for a light bulb that projects light in a angle of 90 to 170 degrees along a horizontal pattern that is perpendicular to the lightning apparatus. Now, there probably is no other light in the world that does this, so this claim is novel. The patent gets initially granted, and the review processes begins on my other claims that could be various natures such as: "A switching mechanism that controls the distribution of lighting patterns", which, should sound an awful lot like a "light switch". This is an extreme example, but you should get the point of how these get through the system.
This might explain why the USPTO shows so little interest in making sure that the patents it awards are of high quality. For the USPTO it makes absolutely no economic sense to it spend more time on individual patents than the absolute minimum.
After all, there is this appeal procedure right? So if people have objections to patents we issue they can use that. In the mean time, when you're paid by the item it makes absolutely no sense to spend too much time perfecting each item you make. And if people out there don't like a patent we issue, then they can pay us a fee for a review procedure.
Simple economics really. That's what management is all about, right?
Well, several folks have commented that one should not be able to patent an educational process or method, implying that Blackboard has attempted to do so. They have not; instead, Blackboard has patented tools and features in it's online learning management software that they claim they invented--the problem is that these tools and features have existed in numerous forms in scores of other software packages on various platforms, and cited prior art demonstrates that these tools and features were even available on specifically education-oriented software prior to Blackboard's existence. Of the 44 Blackboard patent claims challenged, the SFLC's request includes Blackboards patents on user role/file access elements (e.g. use of a file dropbox for assignments, online testing, use of a hyperlink to access a list of course documents, use of a hyperlinks to access communication tools, the communication tools themselves such as chat and discussion forums, etc etc).
To higher ed faculty who are unaware, Available is a modern day web appication, free alternative to BB, et al.
As an LMS tech at a community college, I'm very hopeful that this will be reversed. I've evaluated several LMS's because we are currently near the end of our contract with our current one, and there's really nothing that Blackboard does that is very different than what everybody else offers. Right now, we're looking into Moodle and Sakai, as well as some commercial products.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
"boo hoo, i got modded down."
i hear the waaaaahmbulance on it's way...
And if you don't believe me or "my friend", you can take it from someone else who actually does the work( http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/29/1
In other words, examiners are biased toward accepting as many applications as possible in order to meet their quota, according to Wegner. (emph added).